Three-dimensional imaging is an increasingly popular feature particularly in modern-day portable electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets. One exemplary technique used for reconstruction is structure from motion (SfM). Structure from motion is a range imaging technique, in which the positions of points are determined within a range of ambiguity defined by the distance from the point to a camera. Other techniques are known, and all techniques that rely on a single camera share the inherent limitation that a camera captures a 2D image. Placement of a point from a 2D image into a 3D model carries a great deal of uncertainty about the position of the point on the 3D model. Generally, prior-art techniques work with a number of images and perform a great deal of processing in order to reduce the uncertainty associated with point placement. Thus, a single image defines a point cloud the analysis of multiple images is needed to resolve a point cloud. As a camera captures images of objects from multiple perspectives (such as during motion of a camera through space in the vicinity of the object and changes in orientation of the camera) large numbers of point clouds may be defined, and resolving these point clouds to define a three-dimensional object can require large amounts of processing that can be difficult to support with the resources provided by a smartphone or tablet which is typically small and has relatively limited processing power as compared to larger data processing devices.